The ever-increasing use of video and audio in the military, law enforcement and surveillance fields has resulted in the need for an integrative system that may combine several known detecting and monitoring systems. There are several questions related to real-time and off-line analysis and processing of information regarding the existence and behavior of people and objects in a certain monitored area.
Examples of such typical questions include questions regarding presence and identification of people (e.g. Is there anybody? If so, who is he?), movement (e.g. Is there anything moving?), number of people (e.g. How many people are there?), duration of time (e.g. for how long have they stayed in the area?), identifications of sounds, content of speech, number of articles and the like.
Currently, a dedicated system having a separate infrastructure is usually installed to provide a limited solution to each of the above-mentioned questions. Non-limiting examples of these systems include a video and audio recording system such as NiceVision of Nice Systems Ltd., Ra'anana, Israel, a movement-detecting system such as Vicon8i of Vicon Motion Systems, Lake Forest, Calif., USA and a face-recognition system such as FaceIt system of Visionics Corp., Jersey City, N.J., USA.
The separate infrastructure for each application also limits the area of surveillance. For example, a face recognition system, which is connected to a single dedicated video sensor, can cover only a narrow area. Moreover, the separated applications provide only a limited and partial integration between various monitoring applications.
An integrated monitoring system may enable advanced solutions for combined and conditioned questions. An example of conditioned questions is described below. “If there is a movement, is anyone present? If someone is present, can he be identified? If he can be identified, what is he saying? If he cannot be identified, record the event.”
It would be advantageous to have an integrated monitoring system for analysis and processing of video and audio signal from a plurality of sources in real-time and off-line.